Musings on a Small Life

After five years of trying, without success, to get my almost 40-year old, damaged eavestroughs repaired via the property management company, I took it upon myself to do it out of pocket. Before: Note the lack of eavestroughs along the top roof line. None of the units have them, only eavestroughs along the garage roof. The rotting trim around the old garage door (which also needs to be replaced). The damaged, tri-colour downspout (for some reason all the eavestrough and downspouts had been painted at some point long ago, before I even bought my unit 23+ years ago). The dented back downspout. The roof and eavestrough above the garage. I had the soffits and eavestroughs replaced last week (delayed from the end of June/early July), and had him install an eavestrough along the top line of the roof, as should have been done when these units were built.  Below, the makeshift metal trim around the garage door. It's fine for now, but he was heavy-handed and sloppy with the caulking, the on...

 ...it's the siding! LOL!   That, from last night around 10 PM.   It was banging against the side window (my home office window), woke me up (I go to bed very early).  I sent our property manager a text, followed by the pic, and it wasn't too long after that, within an hour all told, that he was out and up on his ladder in the high wind to tear it off. There's another piece higher up that's loose, but it did stay on through the night.   It was deja vu, because this happened not long after the unit was sided, years ago, at around the same time of night, only it was raining then (as well as very windy). And like last night, the property manager did come out to rip off the dangling pieces. I'm not sure why he keeps hiring the same incompetent company; I can only assume it's for political contributions or because it's the good old boys club (or both). Anyway, all I could do was laugh, because what else are you going to do? It's so absurd.   10:30 AM Update :...

Sleet, pouring rain, snow...we had it all. Though we managed to escape the freezing rain that other areas had, a small mercy. Even so, on Saturday there were lots of accidents in the city and on the highway, including a transit bus that slid off into the ditch (with people aboard) out in the west end. As far as I know, everyone was fine. The view Saturday afternoon from one of my upstairs back windows is the first pic, below. For those who haven't seen my tiny back space, you might notice something odd attached to my fence. (Click to enlarge the pic.) I had an addition built in 2010 designed to prevent Nicki from escaping. Tricky Nicki was my "Houdini" and he had gotten out of the back space a few times prior, in spite of the home-made fence additions my dad and I had done years ago. You can see the frame of the addition, and that's greenhouse roofing attached to it at an angle. It has worked very well through the years at allowing the cats to go out into the gar...

RE: the house repairs: It looks like they had replaced the gutter over the garage on Monday (as well as checked the attic for the location of the leaks), plus repaired my front and back downspouts. Not replaced them, but replaced parts of them and reattached the one at the front that was swinging free. They also replaced the broken part of the adjoining neighbours' back downspout, as the president of the company said last Friday that water would have been pooling there during the heavy rains, possibly causing my 18+ year basement leak. Gutter issue ongoing for most of 2019; hopefully resolved now. Basement leak ongoing for 18+ years (only when the rain hits the back of my unit at the corner where it joins the next unit); possibly resolved, possibly not. Yesterday they repaired the damaged siding from Halloween night (terrible wind and rain storm), and supposedly sealed up along the soffit as well (all the gaps). They did not address the huge buckle in the siding to the le...

[Warning: This is a wordy, non -cat post, so feel free to skip it.] Derry getting cuddles over the weekend I finished off 2019 with a new master bedroom leak (have had issues since early September, with a patch here and there), this one in between the interior bedroom wall and the interior wall of the adjoining spare room. Fun times. I moved myself out of the master bedroom and into the guest room because (a) you can't sleep when you're lying there listening to drip...drip...drip and (b) I was concerned about the potential for dripping water to come into contact with the electrical boxes in the wall. I also shut off the breaker to the bedroom (and adjoining room), just to be safe. Overly-paranoid, perhaps, but better safe than sorry. I'll skip over the "brick wall" that trying to get a response from my property manager was (is) and say this, social media has power, when you least expect it! Last Thursday evening I wrote an absolutely scath...

I can see some light snow in the air right now; we're bracing for up to 40 cms (16 in) in our area, overnight and through tomorrow. All I can say is that Nicki and I had better be able to get to the vet and home again without problem come Thursday morning. Okay. I hauled out some leftover primer and slapped some on the wall in the area that would be behind the toilet. It's been 16 years since the room has been painted, and while I'm not yet ready to redo it (other things first), I at least wanted some primer on that part before the toilet goes back in place. Then I primed the vanity cabinet, since I can't replace it anytime soon, and then put a coat of the leftover melamine (?) paint I had used on the kitchen counter last year. I'm not putting a second coat on, at least not today.   I had just finished when the floor guy called to ask if he could pop over to check out the situation. The upshot is that he'll come Wednesday afternoon to cut aw...

It's just one of those crazy, somewhat frustrating and slightly overwhelming work days. I've made a conscious choice not to get fussed about anything, because gees, it's not life and death and bottom line, who cares . However, I admit to feeling cranky about being here today anyway, which hasn't helped. So while the morning flew by in a blink, now I'm watching the clock and waiting for four o'clock so I can get my butt out of here! Not a lot new at my end, you're all up-to-date on the floor situation. The carpet guy is supposed to stop by tomorrow evening to measure the piece of sub-floor that needs repair. Then Wednesday he'll do the repair and new carpet installation. Yesterday I finished pulling up the remaining carpet and underlay, got most of the staples too, left just a few around the perimeter that are tacking down the vapour barrier. I'll be up bright and early on Wednesday, of course, and so will take out the bed and night ...

I have a bedroom flooring dilemma, never mind how it came to light, it's too long to get into.  However, I had a flooring guy come out at supper time today to take a look and give me an estimate on repair. You can see that part of the floor (in my bedroom) was cut out in between the joists, and badly fixed. It needs to be taken care of because it sags substantially when walked on and I'll have the guy back to do the repair ASAP. He said no worries about falling through the joists, though -- a good thing! My dilemma is whether to take the opportunity to have him redo the flooring, whether that be laminate or carpet. There are pluses and minuses to each, but I'd be looking at about $400 - $500 labour for him to do either option, including the fix of the floor which has to be done regardless. The fix itself would probably be only $100 - $200.   Practicality aside, allergies and feline asthma aside, my preference would be to have a decent, mid-grade carpet...

Cost $70 for his time and the new outlet, but worth it. I was worried there had been a small fire behind the wall, because last night I could see a smokey grey mark above the outlet, but P said it was just the smoke itself and should scrub off. He removed the old outlet and then showed me how far the up the wire the insulation had melted (not far). He said it happened because of the heating and contracting of the wire when using things like my hairdryer and my electric heater (to warm up the freezing bathroom when I shower). Over time all that expanding and contracting just melted the cover on two of the wires. So it wasn't a faulty wiring (during building) issue. I had asked him if he would test all my outlets for shorts and he said he could, though felt it would be a waste of money. That was before he took out the old outlet and showed me the problem. Now that I've seen what was wrong, I'm less inclined to panic about the rest of the outlets. He did change it to ...

So, my bathroom vanity lights have been flickering for a week or so. Okay, I thought, one of the bulbs is ready to die, no problem. I even remembered to bring up a couple of spare bulbs from the basement a few days ago. Then last night no lights would come on when I flicked the switch and I thought, wow, all three bulbs burned out at once, how odd, but whatever. I got up on the counter to change them and realized they were the new long-life kind and shouldn't have burned out, so switched out only two bulbs and flicked on the switch, still nothing. But something seemed odd with the nightlight that was plugged into the outlet by the sink, so I jiggled it and presto! the vanity lights all came back on. Well, that's not right, I thought. Something amiss there with the wiring. Then something seemed to happen with the outlet and I shut the switch off, pulled out the night light and took the face plate off the socket. Um....Even I know this isn't a good thing to see! ...

We were off-line (the whole building) for the entire morning, didn't get back on till about 11:30. So for that reason and because I hate (with a passion) work get-togethers, I skipped the "pizza in the park" today. Caught up on some stuff while eating leftovers at my desk. A coworker just laughingly asked me if I missed them. I responded in politically correct fashion. But frankly, no, I didn't miss them at all. And I wouldn't miss any of them if I never saw them again. There's my baldly honest answer. The one I can't voice out loud. Jeezus, how many years till retirement or the lottery win, whichever comes first? *** My window replacement yesterday went well. Turned out he did it first, because they were unable to get in touch with the owner of the (rental) unit across the street from me. So the installer (the usual guy) showed up just after 8AM and was done before 9:30AM. (Small window.) Old window below. Apparently the panes of...